Seny Kamara

Researcher, Microsoft Research
email: senyk@microsoft.com


Overview

I am a researcher in the Crypto Group at Microsoft Research in Redmond. I completed a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University under the supervision of Fabian Monrose. At Hopkins I was a member of the Security and Privacy Applied Research (SPAR) Lab. I spent the Fall of 2006 at UCLA's IPAM and the summer of 2003 at CMU's CyLab.

My research is primarily in cloud computing with an emphasis on security and privacy but I maintain interests in various aspects of theory and systems. Much of my recent work has focused on formulating new models and designing new ways to protect data and computation in the cloud.



Current Projects

  • Server-aided MPC. Our aim in this project is to explore the extent to which cloud computing can improve the practicality and scalability of secure multi-party computation (MPC) by considering a setting where the parties can outsource some of their work to an untrusted cloud provider. Our initial work on the theoretical aspects of server-aided MPC can be found in [1].
  • Cryptographic cloud storage. Our objective is to design secure cloud storage systems without sacrificing efficiency and utility. Towards this end, we designed and built CS2: a cloud storage system that provides confidentiality, integrity and verifiability while supporting search. The details of CS2, including its architecture and its underlying cryptograpic protocols, are described in [2, 3]. Related work on cryptographic primitives for secure cloud storage includes [4, 5, 6, 7].
  • Structured encryption. A structured encryption scheme allows a client to encrypt various types of data (e.g., social networks, web graphs, images) in such a way that complex queries can be efficiently performed over the encrypted data. The most direct application of structured encryption is to cloud storage where it allows a provider to perform private queries on encrypted data on behalf of a client. Structured encryption, together with various constructions for graphs and web graphs, were first proposed in [7].

Selected Publications & Pre-Prints (Full List)

  • Parallel Homomorphic Encryption (or MapReduce/Hadoop on Encrypted Data)
    Seny Kamara and Mariana Raykova
    IACR ePrint report 2011/596; (abs; pdf)
  • Outsourcing Multi-Party Computation
    Seny Kamara, Payman Mohassel and Mariana Raykova
    IACR ePrint report 2011/272; (abs; pdf); Slides (pdf)
  • CS2: A Searchable Cryptographic Cloud Storage System
    Seny Kamara, Charalampos Papamanthou and Tom Roeder
    MSR Tech Report no. MSR-TR-2011-58 (abs; pdf); Slides (pdf)
  • Structured Encryption and Controlled Disclosure
    Melissa Chase and Seny Kamara
    Advances in Cryptology - ASIACRYPT 2010
    Proceedings (abs; pdf); Full (abs; pdf); Slides (pdf)
  • Proofs of Storage from Homomorphic Identification Protocols
    Giuseppe Ateniese, Seny Kamara, and Jonathan Katz
    Advances in Cryptology - ASIACRYPT '09
    Proceedings (abs; pdf); Slides (pdf)
  • How to Encrypt with a Malicious Random Number Generator
    Seny Kamara and Jonathan Katz
    Fast Software Encryption (FSE '08)
    Proceedings (abs; pdf)
  • Searchable Symmetric Encryption: Improved Definitions and Efficient Constructions
    Reza Curtmola, Juan Garay, Seny Kamara and Rafail Ostrovsky
    ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS '06), 2006
    Journal of Computer Security, IOS Press, 2011
    Proceedings (abs; pdf); Journal (abs; pdf)

Selected Talks

  • Outsourcing Multi-Party Computation (pdf)
    Dagstuhl Workshop on Secure Computing in the Cloud, December 2011
    MSR Privacy Workshop, August 2011
  • CS2: A Searchable Cryptographic Cloud Storage System (pdf)
    University of Calgary, March 2012
    Dagstuhl Workshop on Secure Computing in the Cloud, December 2011
    MSR Privacy Workshop, August 2011
  • Secure Outsourced Computation in a Multi-Tenant Cloud (pdf)
    IBM Workshop on Cryptography and Security in Clouds, March 2011
  • Cloud Cryptography (pdf)
    U. of Namur Workshop on Compliance & Law Enforcement in the Cloud, Feb. 2011
  • Structured Encryption and Controlled Disclosure (pdf)
    MSR Privacy Workshop, October 2010
    MSR Workshop on Cloud Cryptography, August 2010
    RSA Labs (prelim. version), August 2009
    MIT Workshop on Crypto in the Clouds (prelim. version), August 2009
  • Searchable Symmetric Encryption
    Microsoft Research, Redmond, February 2008
    Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), January 2008
    IBM Zurich, December 2007
    IPAM Workshop on Locally decodable codes,..., October 2006

Popular Press

Some of my work has been featured in the following articles:

Events & Service

Program (co-)chair:

  • ACM Cloud Computing Security Workshop (CCSW '12)
    Submision deadline: July 16th, 2012
Events (co-)organized: Invited participant: Program committees:
  • ACM Cloud Computing Security Workshop (CCSW '09, CCSW '11)
  • Africacrypt ('11, '12)
  • Latincrypt ('12)
  • Conference on Cryptology and Network Security (CANS '09, CANS '10, CANS '12)
  • Selected Areas in Cryptography (SAC '11)
  • Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security (ACNS '09, ACNS '11)
  • Symposium on Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems (SSS '10)
  • Workshop on Practice and Theory in Public-key Cryptography (PKC '09)

Interns

I have worked with the following outstanding group of students:

If you are interested in an internship in the Crypto Group, please send me or any other group member an email.



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